January 27, 2009

Global aging, combined with plummeting birth rates, is a catastrophically dangerous menace that only a few people seem to be waking up to. You may not be familiar with terms like “global aging” and “demographic winter,” but you will be soon.

I've been giving public lectures on the problem of global aging for the past 7 years or so, and my audiences are always shocked and dumbfounded as I explain how the West's ever expanding population of old people (due, thank God, to the ever-improving capabilities of bio-medical science), while a good thing in itself, will soon become a prime target for the forced-euthanasia crowd as the decline in birth rates among women of child-bearing age throughout the West (as well as major non-Western countries like Japan and Russia) forces an ever-shrinking number of younger, working citizens to shoulder the economic burden of paying for the retirement benefits consumed by the ever-expanding population of retired, old folks.

This is a lethal combination that will, I am certain, begin playing itself out with horrifying new consequences within the next 10, 15, 20 years. Perhaps sooner. It's hard to predict. What we do know for sure, though, is that the West has been marinating for decades now in the bloody serum of legalized abortion, and it breathes the toxic atmosphere of ubiquitous pornography, insatiable consumerism, the mania for entertainment (much of it violent), and an all-pervasive contraceptive mentality. What would have been unthinkable to Americans a mere 50 years ago (gay marriage, a billion-dollar abortion industry, the rise of euthanasia, etc.) has become commonplace and increasingly unremarkable in this generation.

Where are we headed?

American economist Peter G. Peterson, in his book Gray Dawn: How the Coming Age Wave Will Transform America and the World (Random House, 1999), predicts: “Global aging will become the transcendent political and economic issue of the twenty-first century. I will argue [in this book] that — like it or not, and there's every reason to believe we won't like it — renegotiating the established social contract in response to global aging will soon dominate and daunt the public policy agendas of all the developed countries” (p. 5).

What Peterson means by “renegotiate the established social contract” is: You retired people, as well as all you who expect to retire in the next decade or two, don't expect that you'll be taken care of by the rest of us the way you now are or expect to be taken care of. Safety nets like Social Security and Medicare may have to be drastically downsized or even, if the economy deteriorates badly enough, eliminated. In other words, we may not be able to continue paying for the "burdensome expenses" old people impose on an ever-shrinking younger workforce (Thanks, contracepting couples! Thanks, abortion industry!). And what happens then?

I've been saying for years now what is being reported yet again in this article. What is now known as the “right to die movement” is steadily morphing into what will soon become the “obligation to die movement.” Watch and see. It's happening right now, before our eyes, though just imperceptibly enough not to raise any significant alarm. When it does finally come out into the open, many people will be so desensitized to this looming new evil that those promoting it will have little difficulty imposing it on our ever more effete population.

The politics of “young versus old” is rising, slowly but surely, and we will live to see its pernicious effects. Soon enough we will begin to see how the demographic winter results in an intergenerational struggle. The younger people, who have lived their entire lives learning from the media and our culture as a whole that other people are only useful or valuable insofar as they do one or more of a few things: give sexual pleasure, provide entertainment, make money, or produce some kind of product or service.

30+ years of legalized abortion has hardened millions of younger Americans into seeing unborn children as “parasites” who should be eliminated because they are inconvenient and unwanted. 50 years of the mainstreaming of pornography (thanks, Heff!) have educated a wide swath of Americans to look at others as objects for pleasure. And the aggressive cult of scientism has successfully swayed many people to look at unpleasant realities such as aging, pain, and lonliness as intolerable conditions that must be eliminated at all costs.

So, barring some miracle (and while I do believe in miracles, I also believe in Divine Justice), I predict that the next step in the morbid evolution of the West's enmeshment in the culture of death will entail such horrors as forced euthansia and cloning human beings for body parts. This will begin to take shape as soon as enough people who have no belief in God and no regard for the value of human life begin to realize what “demographic winter” means for them financially.

With that in mind, please consider the chilling points made in this LifeSite article:

Celebrated columnist and pro-family leader Don Feder gave a jaw-dropping presentation on the coming 'Demographic Winter' at the Rose Dinner which closes the official March for Life festivities every year. Speaking to hundreds of attendees, Feder suggested that the demographic problem of worldwide declining birthrates "could result in the greatest crisis humanity will confront in this century" as "all over the world, children are disappearing."

"In the Western world, birthrates are falling and populations are aging," said Feder. "The consequences for your children and grandchildren could well be catastrophic."

Feder noted, "In 30 years, worldwide, birth rates have fallen by more than 50%. In 1979, the average woman on this planet had 6 children. Today, the average is 2.9 children, and falling." He explained the situation noting, "demographers tell us that with a birthrate of 1.3, everything else being equal, a nation will lose half of its population every 45 years."

Beyond an inability to pay for pensions, it is likely that euthanasia will be one looked-to solution to the aging crisis, he said.

"Demographic Winter is the terminal stage in the suicide of the West - the culmination of a century of evil ideas and poisonous policies,'" he said. Among them he listed:

"Abortion - As I mentioned a moment ago, worldwide, we're killing 42 million people a year. It's as if an invading army killed every man woman and child in Italy - then repeated the process every year.

"Contraception - For the first time in history, just under half the world's population of childbearing age uses some form of birth control. Some of us remember when births weren't controlled and pregnancies weren't planned. With all the wailing about man-made Global Warming, carbon footprints and the ozone layer, wouldn't it be ironic if what did us in wasn't the SUV but the IUD? . . . (read article)

11 comments:

It's already happening. I have talked with my state and with hospice in my state with an idea of how families can keep their elderly at home, continue to work, and cut the cost of elder care in nursing homes by Medicare in half. They all tell me it's a great idea. And, there is no current bandwagon for this that I have been able to find. But, it's a win win situation. Now, I have no idea how to proceed with this. Actually, the hospice nurse had her mouth open thinking it was a terrific idea. Where to go to start a bandwagon ? I don't know.

As if what you mentioned isn't bad enough, I don't think society will stop at the elderly. Handicapped people, mentally retarded people and when things get really bad - Catholics. I could easily see the jump to eliminate people who subscribe to a faith that teaches every single life is precious.

The US population will continue to grow due to legal and illegal immigration to 419 million in the next 40 years - an increase of 100 million (see http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/usinterimproj/natprojtab01a.pdf)

@ aussie_oi: Yes, immigration will help stem the tide of demographic winter - for a while. However, immigrants who leave their native country are also lowering their own homeland's population of young working people. If we try to solve our demographic winter problems by "stealing" workforces from other countries, both sides will lose.

THE most significant work on the causes of 'demographic winter' that I have come across comes from the little-noticed work of the little-noticed John Mueller (he proudly states that he is not 'Dr.' John Mueller). Raw academic status, rather than the power of analytical results, must be extremely important in some areas in social science, because John Mueller's simple logistic regression equation accounts for tremendously more of the variance in fertility decline worldwide than any other model, yet this and his other studies remain almost totally unremarked. Go to this link.

Then find 'View as pdf' at the top right, click on that, follow the directions that pop up and download the pdf of the paper, and read the whole thing.

It is a remarkable paper in so many ways: a re-starting of the entire field of economics, to include, for example, the insights of St. Augustine; and using this more complete view of human economic nature to tease out factors that can account for variance in fertility decline worldwide.

Just by the way, Mr. Mueller found that a recent history of a population having lived under totalitarianism, as a simple on-off variable, accounted for as much of the variance in fertility as any of the other models out there, including those by a Nobel Prize economist.

Most of America's immigrants come from countries that are themselves experiencing rapidly falling fertility rates. What happens when those nations fall to replacement levels or below? And what happens when those nation's themselves realize that the people who are leaving are the ones who are of child-bearing years and of the age when they are the most productive workers? Even assuming that these nations don't act to stop these immigrants from leaving, what happens a generation later, when those nations having even fewer people of the age of most immigrants to immigrate.

Falling fertility rates are a world-wide problem (with the exceptions of sub-Sahara Africa and a few Islamic nations outside of Africa). Even if immigrants can stave off the day of reckoning for America for a time, eventually, the jig will be up, the stream will run dry.

GL, you make a good point. I have worked with Hispanic immigrants to the US for decades and when the topic of family size comes up, they are always embarrassed at having come from large families, and without any negative response on my part, promise to "do better" themselves. This means, only two children like a responsible citizen. Where are people who have recenlty come to the US from a Catholic rural culture, getting this propaganda from? The clinics they go to, their child's indoctrination in public school, their Amercian neighbors, and perhaps the effect of Planned Parenthood International. I always respond by saying, "Who brought you here to this coutrry" "My brother" they answer. "Who do you depend on when things are rough?" "my sister" they answer. "Whose house do you celebrate Christmas at?" "My brother's" they answer. "So, you have just told me all the important things your large family has done for you, and yet you want to deprive your children of this benefit?" They smille, as their deepest feelings are validated. Someone has just given the still small voice in their heart permission to speak.